Page 69 of Crazy Spooky Love
“Christmas Day, 1922.” He flicks his eyes toward the ceiling. “My wife had worked tirelessly to prepare a four-course dinner, she might have had the decency to wait until afterward. She was always given to drama.”
I could well ask him if that’s where he gets it from, but I hold off. “I’ll return the diaries when I’m done with them.”
Lloyd stares at me, and I hold his gaze boldly. To be perfectly honest I’m not someone who enjoys arguing with a senior citizen, even if that senior citizen has been officially dead since 1971.
“I’d like to see Isaac, please.” I’m as polite as I know how to be. I can see that Lloyd is burning to tell me that’s not going to be possible, but what can he say, really? Isaac’s just nipped out to the shops? Isaac’s been taken unwell and is in the hospital? Isaac landed a last-minute deal to Ibiza and has gone clubbing? No. Isaac Scarborough is right here, and the first thing I need to do is find him.
“Everyone upstairs?” I say to Marina and Artie, making an executive decision because it’s highly likely that Isaac is in the attic. “We’ll start searching from the top.”
“Searching for what, exactly?” Lloyd queries, drumming his fingers on the table so loudly and impatiently that I find it difficult to see how Marina and Artie can’t hearit.
“The murder weapon,” I say, and I watch him carefully for his reaction. For a second I’m sure I glimpse a flash of raw anger in his eyes, and then he disappears in a sudden blaze. It’s the ghost equivalent of strutting off in a huff.
Isaac is waiting for usin his armchair when we get up to the attic.
“No dog today?”
“We’ve left him behind with my gran.”
“From what I recall of your grandmother, I expect he’ll have rather an entertaining afternoon,” Isaac says.
I think he’s probably right; Gran mentioned that she wanted to take Lestat upstairs to meet my grandpa, seeing as he was such a great canine fan.
“I see you’ve come prepared for anything.” Isaac gazes at the hammer and chisel Artie is clutching in his hands.
“We’d like to get on with the search today.” I smile, determined. “Is it okay with you if we start up here?”
Isaac nods. “I’ve tried to look myself, but many of the boxes are closed tightly and I can’t manage them.” He holds his old, shaky hands up in front of him as if their weakness offends him.
“Even when you’re in a book-throwing rage?”
He looks slightly sheepish. “I wouldn’t have thrown one at you.”
“I don’t think it was all that wise throwing them at anyone,” I say, recalling the horrified faces of the potential purchasers, not to mention the nasty gouge over Leo’s eye.
Marina steps forward and hands Artie and me each a pair of latex gloves. “Glove-up, folks. We don’t want to contaminate a potential crime scene.”
“Thanks, Detective Diaz. Although seeing as the crime happened over a hundred years ago, I think we’re probably safe.” I chuck in theBrooklyn Nine-Ninereference because it’s her favorite, she feels the same affinity with Rosa Diaz as I do with Eleanor Shellstrop. I wiggle my fingers into the gloves anyway. If the gods of good fortune smile on us and we do find the murder weapon, I want it to be of some use. Isaac told me previously that all of the family provided fingerprints for the original investigation as a matter of course; there’s a decent chance that modern police forensics could still identify prints from the knife if it’s been untouched since.
As Marina and Artie pick their way to the rear of the room to start the sweep, I turn back to Isaac.
“Do you think you could give me a brief history of who has lived in the house since 1910?”
He frowns with concentration as he casts his mind back. “Well, obviously my parents were here at the time, and then my mother stayed on here alone after my father died in 1918. Lloyd married Maud and they lived locally with their son, and then when our mother died they moved in here.” He breaks off to shake his head and huff. “I expect he loved becoming lord of the manor. God knows he was always the one in the family with ideas above his station.” He looks down his nose in distaste.
I’m making notes so that I don’t forget anything. “Did they have any other children?”
Isaac shakes his head. “Just the one.”
“And you?” I say, probing softly. “Did you have any other children after Charles?”
His expression turns bleak, and he shakes his head. I’d expected as much but needed to be sure.
I consider what he’s told me so far. “So presumably Lloyd and his wife lived out the rest of their lives here?”
“He was a widower when I finally came back here like this in 1968.” Isaac gestured at his ghostly self with his hands. “Douglas was already here, of course, and we were both waiting for Lloyd in the sitting room when he died in 1971.”
I remember the first conversation I had with the brothers about Lloyd’s death. It was barely three weeks ago, and yet it seems like we’ve been coming here for much, much longer.
